New York Times Upshot/Siena College Poll

Clinton

46%

Trump

39%

Poll of 792 likely voters, Oct. 20-23, 2016

No state that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 has posed a bigger challenge for Donald J. Trump than North Carolina. He has trailed in every survey there since the first presidential debate, and he does not have a credible path to the presidency without its 15 electoral votes.

A New York Times Upshot/Siena College survey released on Tuesday confirms that Mr. Trump’s standing has deteriorated considerably. Hillary Clinton has a seven-point lead over Mr. Trump in North Carolina, 46 percent to 39 percent, among likely voters in a three-way race including the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Hillary Clinton leads by a larger margin than other Democratic candidates, a reversal from the last Upshot/Siena poll.

It’s a big improvement for Mrs. Clinton since September, when the last New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll showed a tied race in the state — as other polls at the time also did. It mirrors a national trend of steady gains for Mrs. Clinton throughout October.

The poll is her best live-interview survey in North Carolina so far this month. In general, it is better to look at an average of polls than any single survey. But the Upshot/Siena poll is hardly alone in suggesting that Mrs. Clinton has an advantage. On average, she has led by three points in North Carolina surveys so far this month.

Mrs. Clinton’s gain came from incremental improvements across nearly every dimension of the survey.

■ Her share of the vote among white voters without a college degree increased by five points, to 22 percent from 17 percent.

It puts her just slightly behind President Obama four years ago, and brings her support closer to the performance of down-ballot Democrats, who outpaced her by a much larger margin among these voters a month ago.

North Carolina has a huge educational split. Below, the divide among whites.

■ She gained three points among white voters with a degree, and now holds 42 percent of the white college-educated vote, to Mr. Trump’s 40 percent.

Mr. Trump’s weakness among these voters is the main reason he’s underperforming Mr. Romney, who won white voters with a degree by more than 20 points.

These well-educated voters have let Mrs. Clinton open up a huge lead in the state’s growing, well-educated suburbs. She had a 38-point lead in both the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte: 61 percent to 23 percent. Mr. Obama won those counties by 23 points, 61-38.

■ She gained nine points among nonwhite voters and now leads, 81-6, among them.

At the same time, the electorate became incrementally younger and more diverse since our last survey, with hundreds of thousands of disproportionately young and nonwhite new voters registering over the last few months. This was the major reason the non-Hispanic white share of the likely electorate declined from 71.4 percent to 70.5 percent.

■ The gap between registered and likely voters dissipated.

In the last Upshot/Siena poll, Mrs. Clinton had two-point lead over Mr. Trump among registered voters, but the race was tied among likely voters. In this survey, there was no gap: Mrs. Clinton led by a seven-point margin among both registered and likely voters.

Mrs. Clinton was helped by female and well-educated voters, who are poised to make up a larger share of the electorate than their share of registered voters. Black voters were nearly as likely to say they had voted or were “almost certain” to vote, a change from September, when they were 12 points less likely to do so than white voters.

White voters

Clinton

32%

Trump

53%

Mrs. Clinton has made gains among white voters in the month since the first Upshot/Siena College poll.

Black voters

Clinton

88%

Trump

2%

Black voters, who overwhelmingly support Mrs. Clinton, make up more than a fifth of the electorate in North Carolina.

And Mrs. Clinton is already reaping the benefits of a strong turnout in early voting. So far, she has a significant lead among people who have already voted, based on the responses from early voters and the demographic characteristics of the people who have voted early, according to the state Board of Elections. Notably, virtually no supporters of Mr. Johnson have turned out.

Most of the voters who have participated in early voting were already considered likely voters. But we’ll be tracking to see whether early voting is changing the electorate over the next few weeks.

Support in a two-way race among voters who are...

The chart below is identical to the one above, except that the groups are scaled according to their share of the likely electorate.

Scaled to size of the electorate (two-way race)

Our poll showed somewhat better trendlines for Republicans down the ballot: The governor, Pat McCrory, and Senator Richard Burr are in slightly stronger positions than they were a month ago, even as Mr. Trump’s standing has deteriorated markedly.

But Mr. McCrory still trails his Democratic challenger, Attorney General Roy Cooper, by six points. Deborah Ross, the Democratic Senate candidate, holds a nominal edge over Mr. Burr.

The Republican candidates down the ballot ran ahead of Mr. Trump in part because they enjoyed greater support from Republican voters.

Mr. Trump held the support of just 80 percent of self-identified Republicans in the three-way race, and he was at 83 percent in a two-way race. Mr. Burr, in comparison, had the support of 92 percent of self-identified Republicans.

Mr. Trump’s weakness among self-identified Republican voters helps explain why he lags by a decisive margin — but it also makes it easier to imagine how he could improve his standing over the final two weeks.

The danger for Mr. Burr — and Republicans hoping to hold the Senate — is that these dissatisfied Republicans might be likeliest to stay home.

The New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll of 792 likely voters in North Carolina was on landline and cellular telephones with live interviews from Oct. 20 to 23.

The sample was selected from an L2 voter file of active North Carolina voters stratified by age, race, gender, party, county and a modeled turnout score. The probability that a voter was selected for the sample was in inverse proportion to the number of voters with a telephone number in each strata and the anticipated response rate for each voter, based on a model of response in the September survey.

Over all, 41 percent of interviews were completed on cellphones. Interviewers asked for the person listed on the voter file; no interviews were attempted with other individuals available at the number.

The sample was balanced to match the demographic and political characteristics of active registered voters in the L2 voter file by age, race, gender, party registration, region and a modeled turnout score. The voter file data on respondents, not the self-reported information provided by respondents, was used for weighting. The maximum weight was 2.3.

Likely voters were determined by averaging a self-reported likely-voter screen and a modeled turnout score.

• Self-reported likely voters were those who indicated that they were "almost certain" or "very likely" to vote, or rated their chance of voting as a "9" or "10" on a scale from 1 to 10.

• The turnout score was based on a model of turnout in the 2012 presidential election. The probabilities were applied to 2016.

The probability that a registered voter would turn out was based on the average of whether they were a self-reported voter and their modeled turnout score, except for people who self-reported that they had already voted. They were given a 100 percent chance of voting.